Ready or Not
by musiksnob
Summary: What the sex talk would have gone like if it was Eli that Clare was talking to.  Eclare.  Post-Cake relationship at an undetermined point in the future  Oneshot.


**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Degrassi or anything else.**

**This is just a silly oneshot. I ended up liking the Cake plot in the last episode more than expected because the whole thing was so ridiculous, but it kind of made me sad that Clare had a sex talk with Jake when I've written a million fics where she does that with Eli.**

**Here's one more. (Apologies for any typos or grammar errors. I was trying to post this quickly.) Not my best by a long shot, but hopefully you'll enjoy it.**

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><p>I was trying to focus on Jane Eyre, but I kept distracting myself. Eli was sitting next to me on the couch, typing up a history paper on his laptop, completely oblivious to my anxious thoughts. Jake was out on a date with Jenna and surprisingly, Mom and Glen had left us alone at the house while they went out for dinner and a movie. We'd been so busy with schoolwork that we hadn't really been alone for a while, and I knew it was finally time to let Eli know what I'd been thinking about for a while.<p>

I sighed loudly and it was just enough that Eli looked up at me. "Are you okay?" he asked.

I knew that this was the opening I needed and if I didn't take it now, I was never going to tell him.

"I've decided I'm not going to wait until I'm married to have sex."

Eli's face registered about six different emotions at once and his jaw dropped a little. He paused for a second, closing his laptop and placing it on the coffee table before turning toward me. "Okay," he said evenly. "What caused that decision?"

I appreciated that his immediate response wasn't to jump me, even though I wasn't sure I really wanted to talk this all out. "It's just…since my parents, it's kind of hard to think of marriage the same way. I mean, you could spend over 20 years with someone and it still might not be enough. I don't see a point in waiting for a ceremony to validate your relationship, when there's no guarantee you'll be with that person forever anyway."

Eli looked thoughtful but he didn't respond. "What are you thinking?" I asked finally, when the silence got to me.

"I don't know," he said. "I guess I'm just surprised."

That wasn't exactly the answer I was expecting. "Do you think I'm making a mistake?" I asked, a little alarmed.

"No!" he said a little too forcefully, and my eyes widened. "No," he repeated, much more softly. "I mean, as long as you're certain, obviously, I don't think there's anything wrong with that."

"Then why are you so surprised?"

He shrugged. "I guess I just thought that waiting was really important to you. But I know a lot of people change their minds, and I know part of me figured you probably would someday. In university, maybe. It's not easy to wait when you don't want to get married until you've got a degree and a career and stuff."

"It's not even easy now," I said and Eli smiled.

"You're right about that," he chuckled.

I was glad he was starting to look happy about this, but I didn't want to give him the wrong impression. "I'm not quite ready yet," I said, and his face softened.

"I'm not expecting…I mean, you should take as long as you need. Trust me. Even knowing you might want to have sex in the next decade is a pretty nice thought for me."

I rolled my eyes at him. "I don't think it's going to take a whole decade."

He looked down at his lap. "How long have you been thinking like this?"

I bit my lip. "Since I found my parents' divorce papers and realized my dad had cheated on my mom."

"Oh," Eli said, and I knew he was thinking about the fact that I had been dating Jake at the time. I had already told him that I hadn't slept with Jake or really even gotten close, but I knew the timing would be on his mind.

"I mean, that's when I started thinking about it. And at first, I wasn't sure, but the longer I thought about it, the more I realized I should just wait until I was ready. Married or not."

"Can I ask you a question? And I mean this with no pressure whatsoever. I'm just curious."

"Sure," I said, a little confused.

"If you've been thinking about this for all those months, I was just wondering…why tell me now?"

I cringed and Eli looked at me as if I had lost my mind. "This is really embarrassing."

"What is?" I could tell he was really confused.

I took a deep breath. "I was reading this article in Sizzle Teen," I began and I could see the smirk forming on Eli's face. "And it was a quiz about how you could tell if you were ready to have sex. And it had all these questions and I guess you were supposed to ask your partner them and answer them for yourself and if you're on the same page, then I guess you know you're ready for sex."

Eli attempted to keep himself under control, but his efforts were futile. He burst out into laughter and as embarrassed as I was, I couldn't help but join him.

"Oh Edwards," he teased. "You're so ridiculous sometimes."

I blushed. "I don't know! I was just reading the article and I realized that…well…I had answers to a lot of the questions. And that maybe I'm a lot closer to be ready for sex than I had thought." My voice softened, "So I guess I just thought you should know."

He reached for my hand. "Well, I'm glad that you told me."

I still felt silly though. "And it wasn't just the magazine. I mean, I talked to Alli about it, and Fiona a little bit."

Eli laughed. "I'm always the last to know." He reached over and put his arm around me, pulling me close to him and pressing a kiss into my temple. "I love you, Clare," he whispered. "And the fact that you might want to sleep with me someday is just…incredible."

I smiled and leaned back into his arms. I was so glad he was being supportive without letting his hormones take over.

"So this quiz…" he asked, the teasing tone back in his voice. "What exactly did it ask about?"

I knew my cheeks were flaming. "I don't know…like how do you feel about your partner…and what do you want your first time to be like? Things like that."

He pulled back a little so he could look at my face. "Well, I'm pretty sure I know how you feel about me…but what _do_ you want your first time to be like?"

"Eli, I can't…" My voice broke. "I can't tell you that!" I half-whispered.

"Clare, if we can't talk about it, you're clearly not ready."

"It's just…embarrassing."

He reached over and gently placed his hand on my cheek, forcing me to look into his eyes. "It's me…you can tell me anything. You don't have to be embarrassed."

I bit my lip. "I don't know…I mean, it's not like I really know what I'm doing." He watched me silently, giving me the look that meant he wasn't going to give up until I answered him. "I guess I want it to be slow and romantic." He nodded, urging me to continue with his eyes. "And I don't want to rush or be worried about parents or anything…I want us to be alone and comfortable." The longer I went on, the more confident I got, and the more Eli looked encouraged. "And I'd like it if…if you took charge…I don't want you to leave everything up to me because that'll make me feel even more awkward. I want to just follow your lead at least the first time, because you're more experienced and I'm going to be really nervous, and I trust you…I know you won't do anything I don't want you to."

His arms tightened around me. "That sounds really nice," he said. "Do you want to hear what I'd like our first time to be like?" His voice was husky right next to my ear, and I shivered a little, nodding in response because I was unable to speak.

"I want it to be spontaneous. I mean, I want to wait until you're 100 percent sure you're ready but once you are, I don't want us to schedule it. I just want to be caught up in a moment because if we overthink it, we're both going to be too nervous to enjoy it."

"I'm going to be nervous anyway," I admitted.

"Oh, I will too…but I just don't want us to put so much pressure on ourselves. If we build it up too much and think it has to be perfect, we're going to end up disappointed and I don't want that. I just want you to tell me it's time and for us to go for it."

That made a lot of sense. "We'll have to make sure we're prepared then. Just in case."

He laughed. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure my condoms are expired. I'll pick some up next time I'm at a drug store. Just in case," he repeated.

"Is there anything else?" I asked softly.

He thought for a minute. "I don't want our first time to be the first time we do everything. I want to take things slowly and build up to that. I want to know everything about you before that point – what makes you moan and what gets you off." I raised my eyebrows in shock; Eli had never talked so explicitly about sex with me before. "There's no rush…we'll do everything at the pace you want. But I'm not going to go from kissing to sex in one night with you. I want to savor everything in between."

"Wow," I said, before my brain caught up to my mouth and realized what I had just let slip out. But his words were doing things to my body that I had never really allowed myself to experience before, and all I wanted to do was allow him to continue turning me on with his hands and his mouth.

I glanced at Eli and I could see the smirk spreading over his face as he realized just how much he had affected me. "Any other questions?"

"I can't remember them," I squeaked. He started to lower his lips to mine and I wriggled out of his grasp, and stood up. I wasn't sure if I was chickening out or being really brave when I told him. "The magazine's up in my room."

He looked confused. "Do you want to go get it?"

"Sure!" I took a few steps toward the stairs when I realized that Eli was still sitting on the couch, looking down at his hands. "Did you want to come up with me?" I asked, trying to sound friendly and not suggestive, since I wasn't even really sure where I was going with this.

"Okay," he said, quirking his eyebrow in confusion.

Eli followed me up the stairs and took a seat on my bed, looking around the room. He had very rarely been up there since my mother was so strict and it was much easier for us to find alone time in his house. The only time I could remember him spending more than a few minutes up here was when Jake had Drew and K.C. over to watch a hockey game and they were making so much noise that Eli and I couldn't get any work done at the dining room table.

I took a seat next to him after I grabbed the magazine. "Okay…where do you want our first experience to take place?"

He laughed. "We've got a bed right here," he joked, bouncing a little to prove his point.

"You're not taking this seriously," I said, though I wasn't really too annoyed.

He shook his head and took the magazine out of my hands. "Clare, I already know I'm ready to have sex with you. The only thing holding me back is that I know you aren't ready. But you're not going to figure out when that is because of a magazine article."

"Then how am I supposed to know?" I asked. "I always thought I had the answer – that I'd wait until marriage and I wouldn't have to worry about making decisions like this. But now all I know is that isn't the right choice for me anymore. It doesn't exactly help me figure this out."

"You'll just know, Clare."

"How?" I persisted.

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe it was easier for me because I'm a guy, but with Julia, I just…" He laughed. "I pretty much did nothing else but think about having sex with her the entire time we were together. And by the time she brought it up, we'd been together a long time and she'd practically moved in with us, and I just knew that it was the right time."

"Well, it's not like you and I are going to be moving in together any time soon."

"No," he agreed. "But I don't think it means that what we have is any less significant."

"When did you…I mean, at what point in our relationship do you think if I had asked you to sleep with me and you were sure I really meant it…you would have said yes?"

Eli thought for a moment. "It took me a little longer with you than with Julia, because after what happened with her, I was terrified of getting that close to you and then losing you. But I'd probably say the day I told you about the hoarding and you came over to help me start going through my room. Because I knew that if I could trust you enough to share that with you and that if you cared enough about me to stick by me through that, it meant what we had was really something special."

It was a sweet sentiment and that was certainly a significant moment for me, but I stared at him as I recalled another detail of that time in our relationship. "Wasn't that literally like one day after I threw myself at you?"

He laughed. "Pretty much."

"So all I would have had to do was wait one day, and we would have slept together almost a year ago?"

He shook his head. "Clare, Clare, Clare. Don't you understand that I only want this if you do? You were mad at your parents and scared about us; there was no way I was going to believe that you were ready back then."

"And now?" I asked. He narrowed his eyes. "What would I need to do to show you that I'm ready now?"

The question was more resolute than he was probably expecting and he gulped. "I'm not sure."

I pushed him back until he was lying flat on my bed and straddled his waist, leaning down to kiss him. He gripped my shoulders and gently put a few inches of distance between us. "Clare, you're not…"

I sat up and he stared at me wide-eyed as I told him the realization I'd come to as a result of this conversation. "I'm not ready to have sex with you tonight. But I know that I will be sometime soon. And like you said, we shouldn't wait until the last second to experience everything else." I looked down at the jeans and hoodie I'd thrown on after changing out of my school uniform and realized I could show Eli exactly what I meant.

I toyed with the zipper pull that was firmly closed all the way up to my throat. "I love you, Eli. And I trust you. And I feel closer to you than anyone else in my life." I started to slowly lower the zipper and Eli's eyes were glued to the skin I was exposing. "I know I can't promise you forever, but if we end up together, I can't think of anything else that would make me happier."

The zipper was completely open by this point and I started to shrug the sweatshirt off my shoulders. My instinct was to cross my arms over my chest to hide myself, but the look of lust on Eli's face was enough to make me feel confident enough to show myself.

"I hope you're not expecting an eloquent response," he said, his eyes still glued to my cleavage. "Because you just took your shirt off and fuck, your boobs are fantastic, and it's taking every ounce of willpower I have to keep myself from touching them."

I giggled and leaned down to press myself against him. "You don't have to be such a gentleman."

Within seconds, Eli's tongue was in my mouth and he had both hands on me, even daring to flip us over so he would be in control. I was so used to Eli holding back with me that I felt lightheaded at his forceful kisses and his deliberate caresses. He placed one leg between mine and I felt him hard against my hip as he pressed his weight gently into me.

He kissed down my neck and into my cleavage and my body arched into his out of instinct. He reached behind me to unhook my bra, succeeding shockingly quickly and wrenching the fabric from my body. I didn't even have time to catch my breath and feel embarrassed at being so exposed before his mouth moved over me and his hands and everything was feeling so intense that if I had a condom on hand, I might have told him to put it on and take me now.

He groped my ass and I was tempted to reach for the button his jeans, but I settled for exploring the skin underneath his shirt. My fingernail grazed his nipple and his eyes fluttered closed. "Tell me when you want me to stop," he moaned. "You're so damn amazing and I don't want to fuck things up here."

But before I could respond, we heard the front door slam shut and we broke apart in a panic. I grabbed my sweatshirt and pulled it on, not bothering to take the time with my bra, while Eli straightened his close and tried to make his hair look more normal in the mirror. I opened the door of my room, figuring I could tell my mother that we'd just gone up for a second to grab a book for school, but Eli thought I was trying to get us out of there and barreled past me, running into Jake at the top of the stairs.

"Oof," Jake said, and Eli took a few steps back.

"Oh, it's just you," Eli said, and Jake laughed.

"Yeah, just me. Sorry, didn't mean to ruin your alone time."

I glanced at the clock in my room. "Mom and Glen probably are going to be home pretty soon anyway, so we should probably…stop," I said meekly as I realized I'd probably just given Jake a little too much information.

Jake had a pained look on his face and Eli seemed to take that as his cue to exit. "I'll wait for you downstairs."

"Sorry about that," I said. Jake and I had broken up long enough ago that we really had become friends, but in order to keep things from getting awkward, I'd tried not to shove my relationship with Eli in his face, and he had done the same with Jenna.

He shrugged. "No big deal. Probably not going to be the last time."

I gave his arm a squeeze as I moved past to join Eli downstairs. I was halfway down when I heard Jake call my name. "Oh and Clare, if you need any condoms, I have some in my dresser," he said, clearly loud enough for Eli to hear downstairs. "We wouldn't want any 'little Eli's running around."

I gave Jake the finger and met up with Eli in the living room who was giving me an amused grin. "See, we don't even need to worry about protection," he joked.

"I am not stealing condoms from my stepbrother. You know how badly he'd be able to blackmail me for that?"

He smirked. "Goodnight, Clare. Tonight was…well…amazing."

I smiled. "I enjoyed it too."

He reached out to me and I thought he was going to give me a hug but to my surprise, he gave my breast a quick grope. "I can't wait to see these again," he said in a low, hungry voice.

"Eli!"

He laughed. "I can't wait to see all the rest of you either." My eyes widened and he realized what he just said. "No, I mean, with your clothes on. Just you. I like spending time with you."

I giggled. "Go home before you get yourself into any more trouble."

He kissed me and said goodnight. I watched him walk out to Cece's car.

All I could think about was the next time I'd be able to let Eli see the rest of me.

And not with all my clothes on.


End file.
